Are those premits for exploratory drilling of another form of exploration?
Exploring does not imply drilling. First stages are gravimetric, electromagnetic and seismic surveys and occasionally looking for bacteria at surface that eat hydrocarbons not contained within a trap. These will identify structures that may trap oil, combined with some (ok quite a lot) of geological knowledge about the hydrocarbon generations system in the basin. They may have leased the land with intention to explore through seismic first and are awaiting results prior to drilling.
Another very good reason right now for not going drilling or shooting seismic on land is that the rates are very high and the equipment and crews are not available. (Small anecdote not from the US land environment, but one of our concessions has been waiting almost one year from lease to before we will actually shoot seismic, due mostly to sesimic crew availability. We probably wont get a rig for another year on top of that). The low equipment availability is partially due to the boom/bust cycle of the oil patch. In the US several of the big players in the seismic field pulled out a few years back due to horribly low pricing and over capacity. The land drilling rig fleet is also at capacity, so if you have a rig, it will be drilling up a prooved field rather than an exploration block. The same goes for the oil company people, current producing fields are a priority, drilling engineers and geologists are focused on those (not exclusively, but it is a priority)
So why push for the offshore. Well the companies engaged on land leases in the us tend (again, not exclusivly) to be the smaller operators who can make the , typically , smaller fields with lower production rates, economic. These guys are subject to the issues I outlined above.
The offshore leases tend to be the focus of the larger companies (Exxon, Shell and the big independents like Devon Anadarko etc). They are rig constrained, but have the budgets for a longer outlook and can assign people and resources to expensive exploration projects, and dont mind signing 5 year contracts for a rig costing 450,000 a day an dblowing 120 million on an exploration well. The reason, deep water offshore wells tend to be prolifc producers of high gravity crude, that is to say, big payback if you pull it off.
So basicaly the economics for the big guys for the land leases are not as attractive as offshore, the land eases tend to be less prolific and the land market is resource constrained.
That said, I see no reason for congress not to push for greater use of the land leases. Government pushes one way, the operators another, each wit valid points, we will hopefuly end up with a reasonable compramise somewhere.
Having a domestic supply means greater domestic security so that if your scenario happens, which it likely wouldn’t, (only because the demand worldwide wouldn’t dip just because we pump our own dino-juice) with extra oil in the market, the price would probably drop, even if only for a little bit, and even if only a small amount, while we pursued alternative energies. Not taking advantage of our own resources is foolish. Democrats AND republicans are making colossal mistakes regarding energy, and we’re all going to pay for it.
Well, I certainly don’t disagree there. I’m for the exploration/drilling. I’ve just been trying to come up with doomsday scenarios for not doing so. Apparently I’m not as convincing a Devil’s Advocate as I thought!
We gotta build hydrogen fusion reactors in order to power mass conversion generators that will create our much needed hydrocarbons from water and carbon waste.
I don’t like the idea of offshore drilling. I’m in Southern California, where decades ago there was a major spill off Santa Barbara, the reaction to which led to the ban we have now.
But at the same time, I’m not a Luddite yearning to see civilization forced back into a pre-industrial age. We are at a turning point at the end of which, we will not have much oil to speak of, but in the meantime we need anything and everything we can possibly use. I’m willing to listen to proposals about how the drilling would be done. I’d like to hear how the aesthetic impact can be minimized, and what can be done to minimize the risk of a spill.
It would be really helpful to have a non-biased presentation on this topic geared toward an intelligent but non-geologist/petro-engineer/roustabout audience.
That’s not entirely true; there are some beautiful beaches here. Santa around the Pier and Venice are probably the worst, because that’s where most people in the city go. They are not so much beaches as crowded urban parks that happen to be next to the ocean. I imagine Coney Island back East is similar–a bit of NYC transplanted to the shore. You wouldn’t go to either place to find sparkling white sand, azure seas, and waving coconut palms.
But go a few miles north or south and you do find some nice beaches.
